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Jordan’s Blog Highlight: Tuesday
Today’s a travel day to the Rocky Mountains, which reminds me that Mike Yorkey, my writer and editor, is in Switzerland for a couple of weeks and returns to the U.S. on Thursday. Listen, I love Switzerland. In one of my previous books, The Great Physician’s Rx for Women’s Health, I told the story about staying in Swiss Alps with Mike and his Swiss-born wife, Nicole, eating some of the best grass-fed dairy products in the world. Another tasty treat was sheep’s yogurt, which can be readily found in Swiss supermarkets, and their “bio” chocolate—“bio” is a universal word in Europe for “organic”— is to die for.
At any rate, Mike carried the Perfect Weight banner over the weekend when he spoke at Maison de la Bible, the largest (and only) Christian bookstore in Geneva. Since today is a travel day for the family and me—we’re flying to Denver for the week—I’ve asked Mike to file a report from the Swiss Alps:
Around three dozen people crowded into the Maison de le Bible bookstore, which is situated on Geneva’s main shopping street, the Rue de Rive. Although I speak conversational French, the store provided a translator, Daniel Harrison, who simultaneously translated my talk into French. This meant I had to slow down and speak no more than one sentence or one thought at a time, but once I got the hang of it, the talk went well.
I would say nearly half the audience was part of the International community in Geneva, meaning that English was not their mother tongue but they were fluent in our language anyway. The others were Genevois, or Geneva residents, who spoke only French. There were a handful of Americans in the audience as well, as well as half-dozen Africans who worked for various United Nations organizations.
I began my talk by asking the audience an ice-breaker question that Jordan likes to ask when he speaks. In Geneva, I asked the audience to turn to the person next to them and tell him or her what they ate for their last meal—breakfast or lunch.
“Here is my next question,” I said. “How many of you consider what your neighbor ate to be healthy? Please raise your hand.”
I saw about half the hands go up, and everyone shared a laugh, so I told the following joke: Do you know what an All-American breakfast is? Answer: French toast, English muffin, and Canadian bacon.
Okay, so I didn’t get a lot of belly laughs, but people smiled all the same. But there’s a lot of truth to that old saying. Americans eat a lot of high-sugar foods like French toast along with sugary cereal and chocolate doughnuts. We eat muffins the size of grapefruits. We eat a lot of high-fat foods like bacon and sausage. That’s why so many of us are not at our perfect weight.
I then brought the audience up to speed on how things are on our side of the pond, and it’s not a pretty sight, as described in Perfect Weight America. U.S. obesity rates are double the Swiss obesity rate, for openers. They were surprised to learn that Southwest Airlines will make you buy a second seat if you’re a “COS”—a “customer of size.” That means if you weigh 150, 200, or 250 kilos, I said, using the European metric system (which is 330, 440, or 550 pounds, respectively) then you’ll be asked to buy two seats. “Twenty years ago, one in 200 American adults were candidates to purchase two seats on Southwest Airlines. Today, that number is one in 50,” I said.
Since we were in Geneva, I shared the story in Perfect Weight America about how the World Health Organization (WHO), which is headquartered in Geneva, recently said for the first time in history that more people are overweight in this world than those who are underfed and go to bed hungry at night.
The Swiss, as mentioned earlier, are holding their own in this “globesity” epidemic. The Swiss obesity rate is less than the United Kingdom, less than Germany, and less than France. Switzerland, along with Greece and Austria, ranks near the top for life expectancy, and that’s because of their diet and the fact that city people walk a lot because there’s no place to park your car in Zurich, Bern, and Geneva. They have to take a tram or bus or park far away and walk.
That’s the good news in Switzerland. The bad news is that processed foods and fast foods are becoming more plentiful in the Alps. By processed foods, I mean breakfast cereals, pastries and treats in cellophane wrappers, frozen dinners, and ice cream treats, and in the big cities, you can find Caramel Frappuccinos at Starbucks. They have their McDonald’s and fast-food restaurants that serve hamburgers, fries, pizza, whatever.
Still, the Swiss are doing pretty well. I remember seeing a tourist poster from the Graubunden area of Eastern Switzerland during the 700th anniversary of the Swiss confederation back in the 1990s. The poster showed a close-up picture of a small loaf of paisan bread, a glass of red wine, and a roll of dried meat, and the caption said it all: “We’ve had fast food for 700 years.”
Everyone who showed up to hear me speak at Maison de la Bible received a copy of Perfect Weight America, compliments of Jordan. I had several approach me afterward and tell me to thank Jordan for shipping the books over for my talk. At any rate, I reminded everyone that Jordan was a big fan of Switzerland and how much he and Nicki enjoyed their stay with us in the Alps back in 2005.
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